The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

248 chapter 20procedures for recalling judges will result in social virtues regardless of thedishonesty of scientists and the corruption of judges. It may be. Smith,Tocqueville, and Marx each had invisible-hand explanations of why goodor bad in people can lead to bad or good in the system. But observe thatthey held on to their non-invisible-hand indignations, about mercantilistscorrupting the British state or intendants overcentralizing prerevolutionaryFrance or Mr. Moneybags engorging the national income.The dilemma is that private good is neither necessary nor sufficient forpublic good. The dilemma shows among the American Founding Fathers, asDavid Prindle among others has noted. John Adams doubted “whether thereis public Virtue enough to support a Republic”; yet James Madison expectedpolitical competition, like economic competition, to make it “more difficultfor unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by whichelections are too often carried.” 21 Adams stands for a civic republicanismdepending on individual virtue, Madison for a liberalism depending on constitutionalstructures. Either individual virtue is necessary for the polity tothrive, or else ingenious structures can offset the passions with the interests.Set aside for the present book, that is, the potentially paradoxical detailsof “social teleology.” I will return to it in Bourgeois Towns: How a CapitalistEthic Grew in the Dutch and English Lands, 1600–1800. I hope. At least we canagree, following Aristotle, that person-by-person the whole set of paganvirtues is desirable for the telos of the person herself: “No one would call aman happy [makarion] who had no particle of courage, temperance, justice,or wisdom.” 22 You are not going to be a fully realized woman if in your madcourage you lack temperance and justice and prudence. You are going to beswept with animal passions. The jails are filled with people of undoubtedphysical courage. Their problem is that they have been too courageous,Thelma and Louise–style, Bonnie and Clyde–style, willing to take risks thatnoncriminals will not or cannot take.The virtues are distinct. An ethic that elevates manly courage to the onlyvirtue will speak of suicide bombers as “cowardly,” since there is only oneunified antivirtue if there is only one unified virtue. If you have onlyone word for the Good Man you are led to unhelpful locutions. Adolf Hitlerwas not merely “crazy,” or in pursuit of some unanalyzable goal of “evil.”A man with personal courage beyond doubt, and charming and witty in